District of Columbia Cancels Appearance of Gospel Artist due to Views on Homosexuality. Who Will be Next?

Homosexual activists and advocates often state that they merely want recognition and certain legal rights, and that churches and other objectors to their life style remain free to have their opinions and state them in a free culture. And any expressed fears regarding compulsory recognition or punitive measures directed against objectors are dismissed as fear mongering.

Never mind that these fears are based in real experiences in Canada and Europe where clergy have been arrested and fined for presenting the biblical case against homosexuality in the pulpits of their own churches or the pages of their bulletins.

In the end we who raise alarms about the increasingly strident declaration of our objections as “hate speech” and as “human rights violations” remain concerned about legal punishment etc., despite “reassurances” from pro-homosexual advocates and government officials.

Today there is more confirmation about the price that is paid by those who object to the cultural juggernaut that activism is becoming. Gospel Artist Donnie McClurkin has had his appearance canceled by the Mayor’s Office here in DC due to his views on homosexuality. Here is the clip from a local Station, Fox 5 News:

Gospel star Donnie McClurkin made headlines several years ago, when he claimed god “delivered” him from homosexuality.

Now, he’s sounding off about a decision by D.C. leaders, to cancel his appearance at a concert over the weekend.

McClurkin was set to perform at a concert on Saturday, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

In a video, McClurkin says he was on his way to the airport, when Mayor Vincent Gray’s office called him to tell him his appearance was cancelled.

“These are bully tactics simply because of stances that I took, never ever demeaning, never ever derogatory, any lifestyle – this is a civil rights infringement situation,” McClurkin said.[1]

Donnie McClurkin is renowned in Gospel music. He has a powerful, joyful and celebratory musical gift. I especially like his “Caribbean Medley” but there are so many great songs. In no way is he strident about his views and they do not figure prominently in his performances. But he has shared publicly on occasion his past struggles, and how God delivered him from homosexual tendencies, among other things.

Well of course there are now those in the ascendency among the cultural elites who will not permit even one scintilla of objection to homosexual behavior. And those who do so must be marginalized and excluded. No dissent from the new dogma of the elites is to be permitted. Dissent must be punished severely and swiftly.

I use words like “dogma” and “dissent” intentionally, since those who like to denounce religious rules and dogma and raise all sorts of objections to past “excesses” of excommunication and inquisition (limited those these were), have now adopted their own fervor for their new anti-religion. And many are far more dogmatic, punitive and excluding than any religious group of recent memory. If you object to the new cultural agenda, you have to go. You must be excluded as dangerous and evil.

Some one may say, “The city can choose who it wants to be at a city concert.” Legally that is true, though one wonders if other performers, say a pro-abortion artist we be so summarily excluded.

But the point to be raised and discussed here is not a legal point but a cultural and moral one. Actions like these put to the lie any notion that homosexual activists merely seek to inculcate respect. They intend much more. Namely to destroy any dissent, marginalize and increasingly coerce consent for their agenda, and apply state sanctioned exclusion for any one who dares question their behavior.

The exclusion of Mr. McClurkin is only another step. Invited clergy are probably already being screened and excluded from any place on any dais if they do not have the politically correct view on this. Exclusions and restrictions are sure to increase and become more severe.

It is a common feature that radicals who march under the banner of tolerance and “libertas!” soon enough usher in their own reign of terror. Because when they say “tolerance” they don’t really mean it and certainly don’t mean they have to tolerate you. For them “tolerance” means your obligation to accept them, and freedom is your right and liberty to agree with whatever they say.

There seems to be absolutely no leeway that will in any way be granted. They will not, it seems, even brook the notion that for many who oppose the celebration of homosexual acts, the opposition is a matter of sincere conscience, not “hate.” If quoting the Bible or the Catechism equals hate, then night has surely come to the West. But we can do no other than adhere to God’s clear and consistent teaching all through the Scriptures at every stage which consigns homosexual acts to the realm of sin. Here I must stay, I can do no other. I will not overrule God to please men, gain access, or be considered acceptable to government officials and powerful lobby groups.

Now that these cultural radicals are politically ensconced the banners of tolerance and freedom are discarded. They never really meant it, and sure never meant the likes of Mr. McClurkin or other bible-believing Christians who object.

These exclusionary tactics are bound to increase and to become more punitive unless enough Americans begin to wake up and realize that all the talk about “tolerance” is not really what this agenda of the radicals has ever been about.

Rainbows may seem pretty, but they usually occur in the midst of a storm. This storm looks to get a lot worse.

45 Responses

How true, Monsignor! Yet those of us who have a lot of contact with gays are kind of leery of that lifestyle. Look, Cher and Barbra Streisand are surrounded by gays who do their hair and makeup, design their homes to be worthy to appear in those interior decorating magazines so dear to gay hearts, etc.

But both Cher and Babs went ballistic when their own children turned out to be gay. Why? They recognize what it’s really like to be gay. It’s more bleak and depressing rain than rainbows. Oh, and gay couples fight like crazy…

Did the rainbow theme come from Judy Garland? Gay men just love her. But gay women love Peggy Lee.

America is an experiment in Liberty, where the experiment has gone completely haywire. The true and objective meaning of Liberty has been lost and America has become psychotic. The symptoms include the Liberty to call “up” as “down” and “down” as “up” and when confronted with reason and persuasion that the truth is quite the opposite then protests and riots ensue demanding equal rights and tolerance for such a view. Progressive symptoms include a plethora of outreach, education, and media programs incessantly teaching “up” as “down” and “down” as “up” and that those who believe otherwise are uncivil, intolerant, and bigoted. The last stages of the psychosis includes societal shifts in values and meanings for “up” and “down” characterized by judges ruling that laws defining “up” as “up” and “down” as “down” are unconstitutional, politicians passing laws against discriminating against those who believe “up” is “down” and “down” is “up”, and leaders evolving to now see “up” is the new “down”. The psychosis becomes fatal when the society is no longer tolerant of those who believe “up” is “up” and “down” is “down” so the society elects politicians demanding laws outlawing anyone who believes “up” is “up” and “down” is “down”. The laws are passed and the minority of citizens who still believe “up” is “up” and “down” is “down” are fined, penalized, arrested, jailed, and even executed. Yes, America is an experiment in Liberty, where Liberty is no longer grounded in objective reality of natural truths and natural laws, where the idea of an objective, just, and good God who exists and who eternally knows “up” is “up” and “down” is “down” is now the new criminal.

The Constitution, which sustains the American Experiment, cannot sustain actual Liberty because it is unmoored from Truth. It is intentionally Godless and deliberately Christless, in Whom is the Truth that makes and keeps us free. It is inevitable that our society will end up rejecting truths in favor of lies and become secular, relativistic, and ultimately Godless. It is in the DNA of our Founding.

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies. ” – John Adams (second president of USA) letter to Zebdial Adams 6/21/1776

and, of course,

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. ” John Adams 7/15/1775

Finally,

“Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams 10/11/1798

Adams did eventually conclude that America ‘s decline was already in motion, because of the very Enlightenment principles (that undermined the Christian religion and morals) that he helped put into practice. But he was no fan of Christianity, mocking the dogma of the Trinity, and he was certainly no fan of the One, True Faith, ridiculing the Catholic Mass:

“Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and three, one: We might not have the courage to deny it, but We would not have believed it.” (Adams to Jefferson, 1813)

“This afternoon’s entertainment was to me most awful and affecting; the poor wretches fingering their beads, chanting in Latin not a word of which they understood; their pater nosters [sic] and ave [sic] Marias; their crossing themselves perpetually; their bowing to the name of Jesus whenever they hear it; their bowings and kneelings and genuflections before the altar…” (John Adams’ letter to Abigail Adams, 1774)

Great point: “Because when they say “tolerance” they don’t really mean it and certainly don’t mean they have to tolerate you. For them “tolerance” means your obligation to accept them, and freedom is your right and liberty to agree with whatever they say.”

At least 10 years ago, when I was more involved with graphic design organizations and conventions, I got a promo for a project called something like “The Tolerance Project.” It was aimed at design school students and consisted of designing posters and printed pieces to promote “tolerance.” But it didn’t have anything to do with tolerance at all, it was just propaganda for certain viewpoints. It was quite clear to me, though, that the earnest people working on it didn’t see it that way — they thought of themselves as bastions of tolerance and respect. And it’s grown wildly since then. How to get the “tolerant” to see that they are anything but? That’s a huge problem.

Thank you, Msgr., for bringing our attention to this. I read the news pieces on the incident at WaPo and Wall Street Journal. This is racist! The gay community has always loathed the black Christian community’s insistence that homosexuality is disordered. If booting McClurkin from a MLK concert isn’t an attack on black Christians, I don’t know what is. Unfortunately, it might take incidences of black civil rights being threatened before more people see how calculating and disproportionately powerful the gay lobby is.

Thank you, Monsignor. The sort of governmental intolerance shown to people like Donnie McClurkin resonates strongly with me, for I am disordered by same-sex attraction yet strive to live a chaste life of faithful witness to the Gospel.

Amid all the hate parading as tolerance, it is gratifying that so many in the Church, particularly among priests and religious who are most visible and vulnerable to criticism and persecution, reject the politically correct line so that God’s true light to shine upon us.

Day by day we are learning what “progressives” have denied for a century, which is that by increasingly depending on the State to administer the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, the Church in America has exposed Her children to a deadly embrace.

Continued disagreement. A and B disagree on a certain thing but agree to live and let live. They tolerate each other’s views. The act of tolerance in this case requires a prior disagreement to have meaning.

Consensus. Either A or B abandons his position and adopts the view of the other. Tolerance in this case is no longer operative; the word makes no sense where there is agreement.

Imposition. Either A or B enlists the power of the state to impose one’s view on the other.

It would seem that by tolerance today’s cultural radicals have in mind the second and third outcomes.

What scares me is reading histories of pre-Soviet Russia and pre-Nazi Germany. In those eras Christianity and Christian moral values (as well as the major churches) were under constant attack –mostly from the political left. This escalated into more and more bloody persecution of Christians the more government power these anti-Christian movements gained. Catholics should be prepared to apostatize (as so many Catholic politicians have already) or to become martyrs.

While implementing your approach may be a satisfying tactic, it is problematic on several levels. Still, I think you are on the right track.

I think the crusading tactic has greater potential for further development than seen at first glance. However, we need to begin by accepting as a political/legal reality that homosexuality has been legally de-criminalized without acquiescing to corresponding demands that the Church upgrade it from sinful to blessed.

For now, we lack the leverage to restore the criminal sanctions that mankind of all faith traditions had imposed on homosexuality for thousands of years. In truth, we’ll probably never restore what has been lost (at least in our lifetimes), as illustrated in the John Adams quote so helpfully supplied above by Destiny’s Doom.

In spite of this reality, we need not believe we have no third option, as you correctly state. Crusading not to condemn to hell those who sin but to call them back from the brink or worse by offering cautionary testimony to those susceptible to giving into these disordered desires. Part of this crusade MUST also include an equally powerful focus upon ministering to the equally disordered abandonment of adherence to the 6th Commandment by the majority of Catholic and other Christian heterosexuals in America.

While the actual seed for all this is the introduction of “effective” chemical contraception (which completely dissolved the underpinnings of two millennia of solid Christian agreement to the view that human sexuality must be governed by biblical Judeo-Christian morality), we wouldn’t be dealing with the hyper-aggressive homosexualist onslaught we now face if heterosexuals hadn’t first completely trashed the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman in our own marriages.

So it makes sense that crusading to prove Adams’ fatalism incorrect must focus primarily on our non-homosexual brothers and sisters and hold them accountable.

There’s much more which could be said to expand this idea further, but that’s all from me – for now.

Imagine if folks would treat religious people the same way they wanted others to treat homosexuals, or homosexuals the way they wanted others to treat religious people. We would have gay marriages taking place in courthouses that featured statues of the ten commandments.

The mayor of D.C. could have paid for this concert out of his own personal finances to entertain those who wish to see this event and no one would have raised an eyebrow. Except, the mayor would have to pay the price politically if he could afford it…:)

I suppose all generations think their own generation is more degenerate than the one that went before. However, speaking as someone with two history degrees, I have a fairly good idea of what things were like in 1934 and I have no hesitation in saying that the moral standards of that time were nowhere near as low as those of today.

So, no harm, eh?! A couple in UK is suing the Anglican Church because they want their ‘marriage’ solemnized in the church. A same sex couple sued because this same couple deliberately requested for an adoption through Catholic Charities knowing they will be denied. As a result CC lost its government funding. A same sex couple is now divorced and they are fighting tooth and nail on their possessions. A lady with her biological child who ran away from the relationship is being legally pursued by her wife because she wanted the child for herself. We will see children disoriented and devastated because of this disordered relationship. We will see the demise of families divided within. We will see suicides left and right because of disgruntled same sex partners looking for more lusty relationship. We will see a much more severely evolved AIDS and other sexual diseases epidemics. We will see the chattering class highly praising and advertising this irreverent relationship. We will see the Church persecuted by the government for not acceding to and implementing this amoral law of same sex marriage. So, no harm, eh?!!! Miserere nobis, YHWH SABAOTH.

“But we can do no other than adhere to God’s clear and consistent teaching all through the Scriptures at every stage which consigns homosexual acts to the realm of sin. Here I must stay, I can do no other.”–God help me, despite all of my sins, to stand with you and with Catholic Church on that and all the rest of her teachings.

[…] against a wall, battling a culture that seems (and is) outright hostile to our values. The Gestapo-like tactics employed against those who oppose this cultural transformation sickens us all. But can we just take […]

There was a musical–popular here in America–called “Caberet” that was, in part I seem to recall,, about Germany’s descent into decay and degeneracy in the pre-Nazi time. Sometimes I think we are racing to become “Caberet America.”

A bit off-topic, but the existence of Gay and Lesbian groups is persuasive (not convincing, merely persuasive) evidence AGAINST Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest”. If only those most fit to survive marry and have children, those whose “sexual preferences” are otherwise would fail to reproduce and be weeded out of the genetic lines over many centuries.
This is also an argument that the existence of homosexuality, male or female, is a voluntary option rather than being genetically determined. If it is voluntary, then it is subject to judgement about being good vs. evil, therefore objectively sinful per Judeo-Christian mainstream standards.
TeaPot562

“night has surely come to the West” – it has, and it has been brokered in by a Constitution which was never Christian but masonic and even Rosicrucian – concealing the true inspiration of those who intended to supplant the word of God with the word of Man.

[…] friend Msgr. Charles Pope has a piece on his blog on the site of the Archdiocese of Washington DC. It merits some attention. Here are a few tastes with my emphases: District of Columbia Cancels […]

The Archdiocese of Washington has decided not to repeat the courageous action they took 50 years ago in participating in the March on Washington. Therefore, I really think it is none of the Church’s business who is invited to an event they no longer support.

Huh…. I don’t know that we were ever invited. I am the pastor of one of the largest African American Parishes int he Archdiocese and I can tell you that no invitation was sent of received at my parish or any of the other parishes from any city agency or civic organization. We surely would have been there. Many of my parishioners have and do participate in the commemorations of this event, there are actually several large events, and our diocesan paper is publishing a special edition. Kurt please avoid making accusations and imputing motives where no may exist at all.

The real haters here are in the main the various gayfascist cabals who try to always tell us what and how to think about “gayness.” To be sure, any Evangelical Christian, Catholic, Orthodox Jew or Muslim who may oppose the onslaught of homosexuality, “gay” marriage, etc., can sometimes come off as being a little harsh, but I find it’s usually in response to the scalding HATE directed against them by the well-organized forces of intolerant leftist gaydom because they merely ENUNCIATE their biblical objection to such sexual deviancy. So just WHY are these multitudes of homo hordes so searingly mocking of those opposing their demented lifestyle? Could it be GUILT over how they conduct their lives? GOD BLESS ALL, MARKRITE

I sent the following letter to the mayor and hope the rest of you will do the same. Evil will continue to thrive only to the extent that good men and women remain quiet.

Dear Mr. Mayor,

I write briefly to say how shameful it is that you seem to have bowed to a small special interest group recently in an effort to justify dis-inviting Donnie McClurkin from the local civil rights concert. In an alleged effort to promote “peace” and “unity”, you are disaffecting a large segment of the American population and causing quite the opposite. Are Americans no longer entitled to freedom of speech? Must we all see the world through the eyes of the D.C.’s mayor and his Arts and Humanities Commission? Or are will still interested in defending diversity? If the latter, then I encourage you in the future to act more like it and to stop excluding black men from civil rights concerts.

When I wrote the letter above, I chose to do so in a way that I knew would be easier for him to understand. I chose to “speak the mayor’s language”, as it were. This is not to say there is no room for a more direct approach. But whatever tack you take, please do it in charity. By all means, be blunt if you’d like (like I was). But don’t be mean-spirited. Don’t be self-righteous, a “clashing gong” or “clanging symbol”, as scripture puts it. Do all in love, as our faith requires.

At least the intolerance, of the pro-gay and (allegedly) pro tolerant agenda, is becoming progressively more obvious so that; those who have bought into the demands of false tolerance may well find it more difficult to look but without see-ing.
When evil moves from a dark room, and into a lighted room, it will seek the shadows but the courageous will shine the light there.

You make an interesting point, Peter. Sometimes I think the best tactic is to let the militant homosexual movement do it’s worst and hope that then people will see them (and not ordinary homosexuals struggling against their disorder) for what they really are. However, that presupposes there is still enough of a moral majority left to make such realisations. After Nov 2012, I doubt it!

So many of the ‘equal rights watch’ street fundraiser-people with the clipboards will state, “Do you have a moment for gay rights?” in an attempt that you stop, say ‘yes’, and then proceed to donate. My husband has been responding back, with charity, with “Do you have a moment for religious freedom?” The responses vary but often it is something such as, “We are not changing religion or infringing on anyone’s religious beliefs.”

My husband then goes on to speak about incidents such as this, about adoption, wedding vendors not wanting to create scandal and declining business with homosexual marriage — all sorts of topics that those afflicted by same-sex attraction end up suing Christians over. My husband asks them why we Christians are being labeled intolerant and bigots.

I hope to gain the courage that my husband has to engage these (and other individuals) to educate about Catholic beliefs. (I think I need an apologetics course on how to engage people on the street.) But I offer up this comment so that others reading this are perhaps inspired to speak up too.

So the gay community are now going to discriminate against the religious and be bolstered in their Christophobic agenda by deplorable Mayoral examples like that of Mayor Vincent Gray,

Donnie McClurkin should sue the city for breach of contract. And then he should pursue a civil rights lawsuit against those who went on record to push for his firing due to their exercise of religious discrimination against Donnie McClurkin who is a member of the religious protected class.

[…] trample on religious freedom through the contraception mandate, and even as we witness more and more societal shunning of those who don’t hold politically acceptable views with regards to homosexuality. But hey, […]